After Last Month's Gun Control Protests, Students Hope To Maintain Momentum With Walkout Friday

Hundreds of CREC students participate in a national walkout last month demanding gun law reform. On Friday, students across the country will walkout of school again to protest gun violence. (Mark Mirko / Hartford Courant)

Spurred by the February massacre of 17 people at Majory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., survivors of that shooting and other students from across the country began organizing massive, coordinated demonstrations intended to pressure politicians they viewed as calcified and out of touch to enact stricter gun control laws. Three separate demonstrations coalesced in the Florida shooting's aftermath: a school walkout on March 14, the "March For Our Lives" on March 24 and a second school walkout on April 20.

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The April 20 walkout was organized by Connecticut native Lane Murdock, a sophomore at Ridgefield High School. Murdock planned the walkout to coincide with the 19th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, which, while not the first school shooting in U.S. history, shocked the country in its grisliness.

After the shooting in Parkland, 15-year-old Murdock began circulating an online petition with plans for a national walkout. The petition has since exploded; as of Tuesday afternoon, 255,051 people have signed. Murdock's plan calls for students to wear orange Friday — orange, she explained, is the color hunters wear. "It means, 'Don't shoot.' "

Survivors of the Parkland attack have sought to keep the carnage they witnessed — and, for some, suffered — at the fore of the conversation about guns and school safety. With the slogan "Never Again," the high school students have pressed lawmakers, organized marches and amassed millions of followers on Twitter, which they use to broadcast plans for the latest protest. And now, two months and two national demonstrations after the shooting, they have kept the Parkland attack from going the way of many mass shootings in America — outpourings of grief and outrage, followed by hand-wringing, smoothed over with time.

"Momentum is the most important thing," Murdock said. "We need to make sure this doesn't just fizzle out."

Abby Coia, a junior at Newington High School, agreed.

"We recognize the cycle," she said. "This horrible thing happens. Politicians say something vague, like 'thoughts and prayers.' And then it becomes, 'It's not the right time to talk about gun control — this is a terrible tragedy.' And then it becomes forgotten."

(4/4) we want to see, and learn of the importance of compromise and conversation. We are very excited for what’s to come, and we will share more information very soon! We will also be giving out orange ribbons to all attendees of the event on the 20th! pic.twitter.com/1HsrHqi8tO

After taking two loops around the school, Coia and her co-organizers plan for students to attend a kind of convention in the auditorium, where they can register to vote and write letters to their senators. There will also be speakers from Sandy Hook Promise, the advocacy group founded by families of the victims of the 2012 Newtown massacre.

At Ridgefield High, students plan to walk out of class at 10 a.m. Friday and make for the football field, called Tiger Hollow, where Murdock said they can register to vote and speak to their classmates on an open-mic basis.

"I think we'll have the majority of the school," she said. "What's interesting is most of the people who don't want to walk out are saying it's because they're scared. But we've been working with students and their parents, trying to say that this is about a problem that's bigger than attendance."

In a letter to parents, Ridgefield High School Principal Stacey Gross wrote that if parents notify the school of their children's participation in advance, the absences will go down as excused. Ridgefield police will maintain an "increased" presence at the school, Gross added.

Students at several Hartford area high schools — Newington, Wethersfield, Farmington and Simsbury, among others — plan to walk out of class Friday as well.

"We are still walking out," David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, tweeted Monday, though he noted that the Columbine community would not and "will be committing their day to community service in remembrance of those they lost."

We are still walking out however the Columbine community will be committing 4/20 to volunteering Once again we are still walking out We are still walking out We are still walking out We are still walking out @schoolwalkoutUS has been working incredibly hard on this

Murdock sees the walkout's true significance becoming clear after Friday, after students return to class, the speeches over, the signs packed away. What the walkout has done, she said, is created a sprawling network of kids from 2,347 schools in 50 states who have registered with the walkout's website and formed local chapters.